Cameron v. Clark
- Laura Swain
- 1:21-cv-02383
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 6
In Cameron v. Clark, Chief Judge Swain ordered Gilbert Cameron to explain why his fee-waiver request should not be denied under the prisoner three-strikes rule.
Gilbert Cameron, whose request to proceed without prepaying the filing fee was subject to the Prison Litigation Reform Act’s three-strikes rule; the listed defendants were not substantively adjudicated in this order.
What happened
In Cameron v. Clark, Gilbert Cameron, representing himself while detained, asked to proceed without paying the filing fee. The court identified three earlier cases or appeals that it treated as qualifying strikes under the Prison Litigation Reform Act.
The court also found that Cameron had not alleged an immediate danger of serious physical injury. It gave him 30 days to submit a declaration explaining why the three-strikes rule should not apply.
Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain did not yet deny Cameron’s fee-waiver request or dismiss the case. The order states that if Cameron does not respond or cannot show that the rule does not apply, the court will deny the request, dismiss the action without prejudice, and bar future fee-waiver filings while he is a prisoner.
The detailed version
- Cameron v. Clark · No. 1:21-cv-02383
- Laura Swain
- May 7, 2021
Background
Gilbert Cameron filed this civil action without a lawyer while detained at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center on Rikers Island. He asked to proceed without paying the filing fee, a status commonly called proceeding without prepayment of fees. The court issued an order requiring him to explain why that request should not be denied under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), part of the Prison Litigation Reform Act.
Three-strikes finding
Section 1915(g) generally prevents a detained or incarcerated person from proceeding without prepaying fees if the person has had three or more earlier federal cases or appeals dismissed as frivolous, malicious, or for failing to state a claim, unless the person faced an imminent danger of serious physical injury when the new action was filed.
The court identified three qualifying strikes involving Cameron: an earlier action dismissed for failure to state a claim and based in part on judicial and prosecutorial immunity, and two appeals dismissed because they lacked an arguable legal or factual basis. The court found that Cameron had accumulated three strikes and was therefore barred under Section 1915(g) from filing actions without prepaying fees. The court also stated that Cameron had not alleged facts suggesting that he was in imminent danger of serious physical injury.
Notice and conditional consequences
Because Cameron was representing himself, the court gave him notice and an opportunity to respond before making a final unfavorable decision. It granted him 30 days to submit a declaration explaining why he should not be barred under the three-strikes rule.
The court stated that if Cameron did not make the required showing or failed to respond, it would deny his request to proceed without prepaying fees, dismiss the action without prejudice, and bar him under Section 1915(g) from filing future actions without prepaying fees while he remained a prisoner. The order also certified that any appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-waiver status for an appeal. The opinion does not state that the action had already been dismissed or that Cameron’s initial fee-waiver request had already been finally denied.
Read the full 6-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.